'Yeah?' Todd's eyes glinted. 'But sometimes, on the Grid, you hear rumours. You hear rumours.'
16 October 2096 Edinburgh
Kendrick still had at least a little money left over from the post-Maze trials, remnants of the compensation he'd received. Unfortunately, the money had been paid in dollars, an already badly devalued currency by that time. Kendrick's financial acumen was not great but he knew enough to transfer the funds into other currencies and store it in European Legislate accounts before it devalued any further.
Which hadn't stopped a lot of that money slipping away in the meantime, but at least it gave him a means of keeping himself alive when times were lean. Careful investment had helped stretch the funds out, but Hardenbrooke's treatments had cut deep.
However, the money could only last so much longer. Occasional freelance journalism – under a variety of assumed names, of course, each with its own bank account – did help to bolster things, but the sporadic nature of such work meant that it was ultimately little more than a stopgap.
Now he would need to seek out new sources of income, without the European Legislate finding out any more about him than he wanted it to.
A few years before, Kendrick had signed a contract with a Grid news agency to work as a freelance stringer, having the advantage that he could file stories while remaining largely anonymous. But now there was the chance of something more permanent, which might mean moving south to London, or possibly somewhere in mainland Europe.
That would be good but, because he was a Labrat, there were some serious risks involved.
Which was why Malky so often proved useful in these matters. There was always the slim chance that background checks could lead to Kendrick's real identity being exposed. Altering the necessary records to maintain his independence was a risky operation all on its own, but creating a personality that would allow him to work fully above board in the media – well, all he had to do was decide if it was worth the risk.
Either that or he'd have to find some other way of making a living before the last of his money finally ran out.
As far as the incident at the Armoured Saint was concerned, it appeared that the heat was now off. Todd had done his job well: Kendrick had been scrubbed from the security records.
So what do I do now? he asked himself, waking in his own bed the next morning. A half-packed duffel bag still sat near the door, but thoughts of fleeing after the incident at the Armoured Saint had faded following his encounter with Marlin Smeby. Besides, he realized belatedly, if the Legislate had developed any concerns over his identity he would have known about it long before now.
His meeting with Smeby had occupied Kendrick's thoughts while he was sleeping as much as they had earlier when he'd been awake. Taking up any offer from Draeger was a wrong move, he knew that. What he'd been promised might not even be true – but even so, why couldn't he stop thinking about it? Why had he just accepted that information and left so meekly, without trying to find out anything more about why Draeger was so interested in him?
Perhaps he wasn't the hero he would have liked to be. He didn't want to die any more than anyone else did. When Smeby had offered the rest of his life to him, he'd very nearly gone down on his knees in gratitude at the hint of such a chance. He'd left the Arlington hotel disgusted with himself, having told Smeby that he'd need to think further about any face-to-face meeting with Draeger.
But the intervening hours had allowed Kendrick to reflect on ways of turning such a meeting to his own advantage. It offered a chance to do something that, as a journalist, he'd relished for a long, long time: a personal encounter with Max Draeger, the architect of Wilber's vision.
Kendrick had long ago given up any hope that his wife or child might still be alive. After escaping the Maze he'd spent a couple of years interviewing witnesses, vainly following up leads. After Wilber's fall from power, however, records had mysteriously disappeared overnight. The bureaucrats and army officers involved in the arrests of citizens following the LA Nuke had suddenly discovered that they'd been doing something else at the time.
The men and women trapped in the Maze weren't, even the only ones who'd disappeared. There had been others, countless thousands now resting in unmarked graves by chilly roadsides.
Exactly why the children of parents deemed to be security threats had also been taken into custody had never been adequately explained. Probably the intention had been to use them as bargaining tools to force people like Kendrick to do whatever Wilber wanted them to do. On that long-ago morning in Washington, his daughter Sam had vanished along with the children of dozens of other detainees – and none of them had ever been seen again.
It wasn't in the least likely that Draeger would know anything about Kendrick's family. But the man had worked closely with Wilber, had been close to the heart of the political machine that had ruled America for a number of years. He was therefore, in his own way, responsible. Kendrick knew how badly he needed some kind of closure, and a meeting with Draeger might eventually lead him towards it. That would make it all worthwhile.
Giving up any hope of further sleep, Kendrick got up and dressed. It was early, very early, but he needed to think, so he went out into streets still quiet and empty in the hours immediately following dawn. As seagulls circled in a slate-grey sky above him, he found his way to the Meadows, knowing he could lose himself in the open-air market that sprang up there every Tuesday.
The Meadows, originally a stretch of green near the ancient heart of the city, was now lost and churned to mud under an impromptu shanty town of home-made tents inhabited by refugees sleeping rough. Some of these, remembering the can-do capitalist spirit of their forebears, had found it within them to scrape a bare-bones living selling anything that might just possibly turn a profit.
The airbases that had once constituted the USA's strongest foothold in the Old World had been abandoned with unseemly haste, and it was surprising just how much stuff had been left behind in deserted barracks and mess halls. Pieces of uniforms, even medals, along with all kinds of miscellaneous paraphernalia and electronic equipment. There were also books, music, clothes, and half-dead data-storage gear from yesteryear, too old and ruined to qualify even as antiques – a vast jumble of fascinating exotica and useless shit in pretty much equal measure. You could browse in the Meadows for hours, even if you never bought anything.
Because it was still so early, half of the stalls weren't open for business yet. Kendrick got a coffee from a van sitting, engine-less and wheel-less, on piles of bricks and wandered about idly, wondering why it should even matter to him to discover that Caroline had been the one to design the hotel's window environment.
Who was to say that wasn't just blind coincidence? But it occurred to him that there was only one way to know for sure. He glanced at the time – not quite so early now, so maybe she'd be up.
His wand beeped to confirm that someone had picked up on the other end of the line. He caught the sound of a breath, a faint, barely audible exhalation.
'Caroline, is that you?'
Something else… Suddenly the ambient sound of the Meadows faded. Experience told him that his augments had recognized something in that background hiss and were now trying to isolate it.
Patterns weaved in and out of the near-inaudible static, and Kendrick's head swam. A faint wash of dizziness almost made him lose his balance – as if, he thought, the eye of God had reared over the horizon and gazed, unblinking, down at him.
The wand beeped again, indicating that whoever was there had hung up. It felt as though a spell had been broken. Kendrick dropped the wand back in his pocket and leant against a corrugated-iron wall, waiting for his head to stop swimming.
When his thoughts had cleared, he pulled out his wand again.
'Hi.'
'Erik?'
'Hey, Kendrick! Good to hear from ya.'
'Listen, I was thinking maybe I do need to talk to you or Buddy. Were you serious when you said you were in close contact with him?'
